Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi, who returned on Monday after a three-day visit to the Indian Ocean archipelago of Seychelles, is likely to meet secretaries of key Union ministries and departments on Tuesday for a brainstorming session.
Secretaries will brief the PM on the performance of their ministries and departments in improving ease of living for citizens, ease of doing business, fostering Atmanirbhar Bharat, or self-reliance, and reforms that can be undertaken.
This will be the PM’s second such interaction. He chaired a meeting of the entire Union Council of Ministers on May 21, hours after returning from his five-nation tour to the United Arab Emirates, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway.
Tuesday’s meeting comes amid buzz over a Cabinet reshuffle. The Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government completed two years of its third term on June 9. The PM is yet to reshuffle his Council of Ministers in this term. He reshuffled and expanded his Council of Ministers in July 2016 and July 2021, a month after the two governments completed their respective two years.
Apart from the PM’s efforts at assessing the performance of ministries and the reforms the government could undertake in the months to come, the Cabinet Secretariat has also been sending missives to all ministries and departments to routinely update the details of their Cabinet and Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) notes.
In an office memorandum dated June 17, which was the second such missive since May, the Cabinet Secretariat pointed out that there were “lags” and “gaps” in the updating of Cabinet and CCEA notes by some ministries and departments on the inter-ministerial consultation module of the government’s eSamikSha. It observed that the data is used for assessment in the preparation of the monthly administrative scorecard and should be updated regularly.
In another office memorandum dated June 17, it asked ministries and departments to expedite the finalisation of their Cabinet and Cabinet committee notes related to the appraisal of schemes and projects, and ticked them off for going in for repeated inter-ministerial consultations.
It said fresh consultations are not required if the sponsoring ministry or department is in agreement with the recommendations of the appraisal bodies, such as the Expenditure Finance Committee and Public Investment Board. In such cases, the sponsoring ministry or department is required to send the draft note, with the approval of the minister in charge, to the Department of Expenditure (DoE) within seven days for obtaining the approval of the finance minister, the office memorandum said. The DoE is required to communicate its comments to the sponsoring ministry within seven days, it said.
On deregulation and reforms, the Cabinet Secretariat set up the high-level committee on non-financial regulatory reforms under former Cabinet Secretary and NITI Aayog member Rajiv Gauba in August 2025. It has also constituted a task force on deregulation and compliance reduction, which Special Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat K K Pathak heads. Secretaries have also been asked to push reforms and deregulation in the states.
